Flight Patterns:
A Forum on the Design Challenges of Urban Ecology and Biodiversity
Moderated by Natalie Jeremijenko, New York Prize Fellow

Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 6:30pm
at Van Alen Institute

In response to the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River on January 15th, and to the growing number of “bird strikes” to aircraft in metropolitan areas, please join Natalie Jeremijenko for a lively discussion and debate about the perceived threats of birds to public safety, and about the real risks and challenges we face in planning and designing for urban biodiversity.

Jeremijenko brings together a cross-disciplinary group from architecture, art, ecology, biology, and environmental planning and policy to better understand the plight of bird populations in the context of our struggles to balance urban infrastructural and ecological agendas and demands. How might we rethink transportation infrastructures in relationship to wildlife restoration and conversation strategies in metropolitan areas and vice versa? What are the consequences of wildlife species adaptation to urban phenomena, systems, people? How do we design for cohabitation?

Participants include Jeremy Edmiston, Architect and principal of SYSTEMarchitects; Paul Mankiewicz, Biologist, Plant Scientist, and Director of the Bronx-based Gaia Institute; Eric Sanderson, Landscape Ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Founder of the Mannahatta Project; and Kim Tripp, Director of the Jamaica Bay Institute at Gateway National Recreation Area.

Natalie Jeremijenko is one of Van Alen Institute’s 2008-2009 New York Prize Fellows in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences, supported by a partnership between Van Alen Institute and the Social Science Research Council.

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